In my first job we had to write "bus-proof" code. That meant plenty of documentation and everything saved safely into config control.
The idea is that anyone on a project could be knocked down by a bus on the way home, and the project simply must go on with nothing lost.

Stack Overflow – like most online communities I've studied – naturally trends toward increased strictness over time. It's primarily a defense mechanism, an immune system of the sort a child develops after first entering school or daycare and being exposed to the wide, wide world of everyday sne...